


Auslander

by eternaleponine



Series: Where There Is A Flame [10]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood, Foreign Language, Gen, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 10:32:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10275101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: After her mother's death, Lexa's father leaves her with his parents.  When he finally comes to get her again, it's to take her to a whole new country where she doesn't speak the language.  Luckily, there's someone who is happy to help her with that.





	

" _Guten Tag!_ " 

Lexa looked up from the elastic string attached to the stiff white top she'd been given that she couldn't figure out what she was supposed to do with and saw a girl about her size with wild reddish-brown hair barely tamed back into braids smiling at her. She didn't say anything in return, because she didn't know what she was supposed to say.

" _Guten Tag,_ " the girl repeated insistently, her smile faltering slightly and her forehead furrowing. " _Hallo?_ "

"Oh," Lexa said, then felt stupid for saying it. "Hello."

"Ah!" The girl's smile came back. " _Bist du Amerikaner?_ "

"Ameri—" Lexa's frown only deepened, even though she knew that she was supposed to smile back. She didn't feel like smiling. She _never_ felt like smiling. She couldn't remember the last time she smiled but probably it was back before her mom died, and that was a long, long time ago, or at least it felt like it. Only at the same time it felt like it had just happened yesterday, because sometimes she would go to bed and when she woke up in the morning, for a second, just a second, she would forget where she was and she would forget that her mother was dead, and then it would all come crashing in again, and she would want to cry but she never did. Not anymore. "I'm American."

" _Sprichst du nicht Deutsch?_ " the girl asked. 

"I don't know what that means!" Lexa said, scowling right at her now because she couldn't figure out this stupid uniform and she couldn't understand this stupid girl and she didn't _want_ to be here, at this place or in this country or any of it. She wanted to be back _home_ , but her father said that they would probably never go back there and it wasn't their home anyway, it was just a place that they'd lived.

"It means, 'Do you speak no German?'" the girl said, and her voice was strange, like everyone's voice here was strange when they spoke in English, like they had something in their throats or something, she didn't even know. It didn't sound like people at home, or even like the people where her grandparents lived, whose voices were all flat and nasal, and they all sounded like they were annoyed all the time. "The answer is, ' _Nein, ich spreche kein Deutsch._ '" 

"Okay," Lexa said. 

The girl shook her head, but she was laughing. " _Nein, nein._ You have to _say_ it. _Sagst du, 'Nein, ich spreche kein Deutsch.'_ "

"I don't want to say it," Lexa said. "You speak English."

" _Ein bisschen, aber es ist sehr unhöflich, dass ich Englisch für dich spreche, aber du kein Deutsch für mich sprichst._ " The girl, whoever she was, looked at her expectantly, her hands on her hips, like she expected Lexa to somehow puzzle out what she'd said. 

So she did the only thing she could think of to do, even though she knew it was the wrong thing. She reached out and tried to hit her.

It didn't work. The girl was too fast. She blocked the blow, and then stopped with her the heel of her own hand only an inch away from Lexa's chin, close enough that she stumbled back half a step, startled. Strangely enough, the girl didn't actually seem all that bothered by the fact that she'd tried to hurt her. She just flapped the end of her belt, which was green, unlike the white one that Lexa had been given. "You're not supposed to do that here," she said. "Out there –" she gestured toward the main room, beyond the closed door of the little locker room, "okay, fine, we say it is practice. Here, it's just being mean."

Lexa turned away so that the girl, whose name she _still_ didn't know, but she was too stubborn to ask, couldn't see the tears of frustration forming in her eyes. 

" _Kann ich dir helfen?_ " Luna asked, pointing to her uniform and the stupid dangling string. "Can I help you?"

Lexa clenched her jaw, wanting to refuse, but if she hadn't figured it out by now, she probably wasn't going to, and if she didn't come out soon her father would probably come in after her or something, even though it as the locker room meant for girls. "Okay," she said, then added, sort of as an apology for having tried to hit her, "please."

" _Bitte,_ " the girl said. "That's 'please'."

" _Bitte,_ " Lexa said softly. 

" _Ja!_ ," the girl cheered. " _Sehr gut!_ " And then she very quickly showed Lexa how to put the loop at the end of the elastic around the button in the slit on the side, which she hadn't even noticed, under the front flap of the shirt, jacket, whatever it was. She explained that it just supposed to help keep the back down, but it only kind of worked, and if it really annoyed Lexa, she could just cut it off. This explanation came mostly in English, but some of the words were missing or in the wrong order, and some of it was supplemented with pantomime. Apparently the German gesture for scissors was the same as the American one. 

Lexa nodded, and then the girl showed her how to tie her belt, too, which took a couple of tries to get the ends even, but finally earned her another enthusiastic ' _sehr gut_ ' which she figured must mean 'good job' or something, especially since it was accompanied by a thumbs up. She straightened her back, lifted her chin like her dad did when he wanted to make himself look even taller and stronger. "How do you say thank you?"

" _Danke!_ " the girl said. 

" _Danke,_ " Lexa repeated. 

" _Bitte!_ " the girl said. 

Lexa frowned. "What? Please what?"

"Oh!" she laughed. "That I guess is a German thing. The word for 'please' and 'you're welcome' is both ' _bitte_ '."

"Oh." Lexa scrunched her nose. "Why?"

The girl threw up her hands as she shrugged. " _Ich habe keine Ahnung!_ "

Just then a woman stuck her head in and said something that Lexa couldn't understand, but from the look on her face she wasn't very happy about something. The girl looked at her and rolled her eyes as soon as the woman had disappeared. "Class is starting," she said. "We're late." She reached out and took Lexa's hand, and led her out into the big room, where there were a lot more kids than when Lexa and her father had first gotten there, all lined up in rows on the mat. Some were bigger than Lexa and some were smaller, but there was only a few whose belt was white like hers. 

The girl showed her where to line up, all the way at the back of the last row, and then even though she messed up the way the colors were all in order, she stood right next to her with a look on her face that said that no one had better tell her that she was wrong. 

The class started, and Lexa was very quickly lost, because everyone else knew what they were doing, even the other white belts, and she didn't, and even though sometimes it seemed like the teacher, or the assistant teachers, who weren't quite grownups but they weren't quite kids either, remembered that she was new and didn't speak German, sometimes it seemed like they forgot. But the girl next to her whispered instructions to her when she could, and showed her how to do things without saying anything when she might have gotten in trouble for talking, and Lexa started to feel a little less lost. When they had to pick partners, the girl picked her, showing her what to do and how to do it (with the help of the instructors, of course) and when they had to change partners she said something to Lexa's new partner, a grim-looking boy with thick dark hair, and he nodded, and when he spoke to her it was in English that was not as good as the girl's, but at least she could understand him. 

By the time class ended, Lexa realized that she didn't hate it. She actually kind of liked it. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't _too_ hard, and some of it was actually kind of fun. She'd even learned the thing that the girl had done to stop her when she'd tried to hit her!

As soon as they were dismissed, and filed off the mats row by the row, the girl grabbed her hand again. " _Sehr gut!_ " she said, squeezing. " _Du lernst schnell!_ "

Lexa didn't know what the second part meant, but she knew the first part, so she just said, " _Danke._ "

The girl beamed, then looked at her mischievously. " _Sprichst du nicht Deutsch?_ "

Lexa frowned, trying to remember, and then finally said, a little haltingly, " _Nein, ich spreche kein Deutsch._ "

The girl laughed. "Lügner! Du sprichst ein bisschen Deutsch!"

"What?"

"I said, 'No, you speak a little German'. You would say, ' _Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch._ "

Lexa repeated it. 

The girl beamed. " _Ja!_ " She looked away when someone said something, and then looked back. "I have to go," she said, like it actually made her sad that she had to. "I'll see you next time?"

"When is next time?" Lexa asked. "I don't know when I can come."

" _Dienstag,_ " the girl said. "That's Tuesday. I come on _Dienstag, Donnerstag, und Samstag. Das ist heute._ Today. Saturday. I come Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday."

"I'll have to ask my dad," Lexa said. 

"Okay." The woman who had said something before sounded even less patient when she repeated it, or maybe she said something else entirely, Lexa didn't know. " _Bis später_! That means 'see you later'."

"See you— _bis später_ ," Lexa said.

The girl waved and started to walk away, but then Lexa realized something. "Wait!"

She turned around. " _Ja?_ "

"How do you say, 'What's your name?'"

The girl beamed. " _Wie heisst du?_ "

"I'm Lexa," she said. " _Wie heisst du?_ "

"Luna. _Ich heisse_ Luna. But I have to go."

" _Danke_ for helping me, Luna."

Luna just smiled and waved as her mother tugged her out the door.

Her father looked up from the file he'd been reading when she came over to him. "Why aren't you changed?" he asked. "We need to go."

Lexa sighed, and went to go change, coming back out in her regular clothes with her uniform folded carefully into the plastic bag it had come in. Maybe her father could find her a bag to put it in to bring next time, or she could use her old backpack if he got her a new one for this year. They went out into the street, and without thinking she reached for his hand, but then let it drop when she remembered that he never held her hand, even when they were crossing the street. She had to take two steps to his one, and she was more out of breath trying to keep up with him than she had been going through a whole class of exercise. 

When they got home he went right into his bedroom which was also his office, so she just found a book to read and curled up on the couch. They didn't have a TV yet, but even if they did, there would probably be no point in watching it because it would all be in German. Of course, maybe if she could find some baby program like Sesame Street or something maybe it would help her learn German, and then she would be able to impress Luna with new words next time she saw her. 

That night they sat down to dinner, and finally her father asked, "How did you like your class?"

"I liked it," she said. "It was fun."

"Good," he said. "I'm glad."

"I talked to a girl named Luna," she added. "She showed me how to tie my belt. Hers is green, so I guess that means she knows what she's doing." 

"I guess it does," he agreed. "That was nice of her to help you."

Lexa nodded. She didn't tell him that it was especially nice because she'd helped her even after Lexa had tried to hit her. She didn't think that he would be very happy to hear that. He'd said that she had to go to the class so that she would learn self-control, and she was pretty sure that trying to hit someone just because they were talking to you in a language that you didn't understand, even though they _knew_ you didn't understand it, didn't count as self-control.

"She says that she goes to class on..." She frowned, trying to remember the right words. " _Dienstag, Donnerstag_ and _Samstag_." 

He looked at her, and his eyebrows did the thing that they did when he was either annoyed or thinking really hard about something. She couldn't always (or even usually) tell which. 

"That's Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday," she said, in case he was making that face because he didn't know what the words meant either. Even though they were living in Germany now, she didn't think that he knew any more German than she did, and maybe he didn't know any at all. Maybe she could help him learn, like Luna was helping her learn. 

"I know the days of the week, Lexa," he said. 

"Oh." She slumped back in her chair, but then sat up straight again, because he didn't like it when she slouched. "So can I go on Tuesday, too? And Thursday and Saturday?"

"We'll see," he said. "You know that I have to work."

"I know." When he was working, she had to go to the activities center, where all of the other kids who lived on the base who didn't have anyone to watch them went while their parents were working. Which wasn't actually that many, because for most of them their dad was the one working and their mom stayed at home. At least that's what one of the kids had told her. But his mom had a part time job, he said, so sometimes he had to come here. And sometimes kids came just because they were bored, even if they did have someone at home to watch them. Lexa mostly just stayed in a corner and read books.

"I'll check the schedule," he said. "But we'll try, okay? That's the best that I can do."

"Okay," she said, and crossed her fingers under the table that for once when he said that they would try that the answer wouldn't end up being no.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Sue for answering my questions about whether children who don't know each other would use the formal or informal version of 'you'. The answer is informal. Always informal. Any and all other errors in the German are mine.


End file.
